Adventure 46: Campus Biryani

Campus Biryani & Kebab (no website)
1437 Regent St.
3 Adjectives: quirky, cheap, fast
Price: entree (6-13)
Authenticity:
Atmosphere:
Overall:
Other Opinions: yelp, madisonatoz, hobszeitgeist...
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Located across the street from The Regent, Campus Biryani is a quirky restaurant that boasts both Indian and Mediterranean cuisine. Despite the somewhat questionable interior, the restaurant serves some delicious cheap food.

My biggest problem with the layout of Campus Biryani is the haphazardly strewen fast food restaurant furniture and ketchup/mustard/napkin arrangement. Also I would not recommend using their bathroom. Considering the deliciousness of the food, the place could certainly use some refurbishment to bump up the atmosphere (I may not even mind the prices going up). What is kind of neat about the place is the cool Arabic tapestries and the BBC-like English/French news broadcasting in the corner (upon closer inspection it's Al Jazeera, a nice ironic jab at the news media that seems to constantly want to portray this TV station as extremist). If you get past the atmosphere at Campus Biryani (which is also generally devoid of other diners since this place does a lot of delivery orders), the food is actually quite good.

The cheap food at this restaurant is generally excellent if you know what to order. My favorite dish is the chicken tikka with rice. The chicken is very flavorful with many spices and it comes with a generous helping of biryani rice. If you are an adventurous seafood eater, I would also recommend the shrimp dish (photo above) which is a very flavorful cumin shrimp dish that is actually cooked with whole shrimp, something that is rarely done in town. The fries at Campus Biryani are also generally good and come with a tasty yogurt sauce. What I do not recommend at this place is the naan and the vegetable mango. The naan is simply warmed greek pita that simply does not work with the Indian dishes. The vegetable mango is very bland and appears to be cooked with a frozen veggie mix.

Campus Biryani adds a good ethnic addition to the south west side of campus. If you are really not comfortable with the sketchy layout of the restaurant, there is always the very fast delivery option.